Tuesday

May 29, 2018 at 11:46 AMMay 29, 2018 at 11:46 AM

Whether a Little Leaguer or a professional, most former ballplayers have at least one moment from their playing days they wish they could take back.

For Bob Tewksbury it was the hit he surrendered to Franklin “F@#$%!” Stubbs in the eighth inning of a game on a sweltering August night in St. Louis in 1990. It was the only hit he allowed that night on a 79-pitch, near masterpiece against the Houston Astros.

Tewksbury remembers the event so vividly that he spends 16 pages of his new book “Ninety Percent Mental” (Da Capo Press; 248 pages; $27) describing the game leading up to Stubbs’ double. He’s quick to point out that Cardinals coaches moved left-fielder Vince Coleman a shade to center because the left-handed Stubbs was a pull hitter. The ball fell where Coleman would have normally been positioned.

“In the dugout after the eighth inning, I accept consolation from my teammates, who were hoping that together we could make this a night for the ages,” Tewksbury writes along with co-writer Scott Miller. “I chat with my catcher, who says it was ‘a good pitch.’ I still second-guess my pitch selection and location. And I am not happy with my thought process, for wanting the pressure to end, even in some small way, instead of full-on going for it.”

Tewksbury pitched 13 years in the MLB for the Yankees, Cubs, Cardinals, Rangers, Padres and Twins, winning 110 games. He’s best known for his control, walking just 292 batters in 1,807 career innings pitched, an average of just 1.4 walks per nine innings.

Tewksbury, who has a master’s degrees in sports psychology, is now a mental skills coach for the San Francisco Giants. His mantra to MLB players is to envision positive results and speak to one’s self about good outcomes.

He writes that 22 of the 30 MLB teams have full-time mental skills coaches, sort of like an in-house employee assistance program, helping player with on-the-field and well as off-the-field issues.

Tewksbury writes a lot of about his work with Cubs pitcher Jon Lester and first-baseman Anthony Rizzo, who were young players in Boston when he was the mental skills coach for the Red Sox. Lester and Rizzo became the stars they were projected to be by scouts, but both talk in the book about tips they learned from Tewksbury to help them perform better.

Tewksbury also discusses his work with Andrew Miller and Rich Hill, solid pitchers whose careers could have ended early until they started employing his methods.

But given baseball’s high percentage of negative results, Tewksbury could have told more stories about his work with mediocre players, especially on combating negative thoughts.

Where Tewksbury excels is his epilogue, exploring the difficulty of reaching the major leagues and staying there. Playing baseball at its highest level is not for the weak of mind and it’s hard for even the best players to accept the harsh realities of the game and life.— Peoria Journal Star Executive Editor Dennis Anderson can be reached at danderson@pjstar.com and on Twitter at @dennisedit.